


What We Make For Ourselves

by HombreDeFlorida



Category: Terminator (Movies), Terminator: Dark Fate
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Canon Compliant, Chance Meetings, Fate, Gen, Judgment Day (Terminator), Movie: Terminator: Dark Fate, Old Friends, Post-Canon, San Francisco Bay Area, Sequel, Spoilers, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 12:10:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21409972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HombreDeFlorida/pseuds/HombreDeFlorida
Summary: Set a year after the events of Terminator: Dark FateJudgement Day is drawing ever closer, and Sarah Connor decides to warn an old friend in case she and Dani Ramos are unable to stop it in time.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 27





	What We Make For Ourselves

**Oakland, 2021**

Sarah Connor’s knuckles were white as she maneuvered her jeep down the residential streets at highway speeds. She and Dani were cutting it close as is, having spent the last year finalizing their plan to storm the no-name tech startup in Silicon Valley that would soon create Legion. She’d stopped Judgement Day once before, and she was pretty sure she could do it again, but there was one last detour she needed to make in case their plan didn’t pan out. Someone she wanted to warn.

She’d never thought about visiting him before. She figured it would do no good, serve no purpose other than reopen old wounds. Until recently, she didn’t even know where he lived, but with Judgement Day drawing nearer she decided to take initiative. It didn’t take long to track him down; it's amazing how much you can find out about a person on Google in just a few minutes with only their full name. By sheer coincidence, he lived in the Bay Area, so she waited until they were already headed up for their mission to squeeze in time for her little visit. Might as well kill two birds with one stone.

Dani sat idly in the passenger seat, cradling a small manila envelope stuffed to the brim with building schematics. Grace hadn’t given them much to work with in terms of intel besides a company name and a short window for when the grid was supposed to go down, but somehow they’d managed to find the right data cache and download the floor plan for the server farm that would soon host the Legion software; _Skynet by any other name still reeked of shit_.

Dani would rather be at the motel finalizing their game plan than out in the open so Sarah could wax sentimental for no good reason. This outing was tactically dangerous, as they both had warrants out for their arrest, Dani by ICE, Sarah by every intelligence community in the western world. A couple of fake driver’s licenses and Milwaukee accents would do little to hide their identities once the feds got back on their trail.

Sarah slowed the jeep to a crawl as she rounded the final corner onto a dead end street that butted right up against MacArthur Freeway. She parked on the curb between two houses, no doubt to the chagrin of their tenants, but she immediately knew she wouldn’t be there for long.

There he was.

Right across the street, piling a small mountain of boxes into the back of an old pickup truck. Sarah didn’t dare take her eyes off him, even for a second, lest he disappear back into the void that was her memory. She hadn’t seen him in almost forty years, had almost forgotten his face, but all at once everything came flooding back. Good memories and bad, of the last normal day she ever lived. The day her best friend and mother were murdered by a machine, the day she went from an English major waiting tables to make ends meet to a soldier hellbent on stopping the end of the world. That was a lifetime ago, but here he was in front of her, younger now than ever before. She couldn’t help but stare, drinking in his face, memorizing every line, every curve. A man, probably his father, popped the truck’s hood and called to him as he checked the engine.

“Kyle, I’m topping her off with oil, but you need to remember to get gas before you hit the highway.”

“I’ll burn that bridge when I get to it, we’re not done loading my crap yet.”

Kyle Reese gingerly set down a duffel bag stuffed with unfolded clothes, and threw open the passenger side door. He was getting ready for his first semester at school, and packing his truck was proving to be the hardest part of the transition. “It’s like playing Tetris,” he quipped as he rearranged a few boxes, trying to will more space out of thin air.

He was taller than Sarah remembered. This Kyle had had an unremarkable childhood and never missed a meal, he was a far cry from the malnourished guerrilla she had known. Seeing him, this ghost from her past, living a normal life in a future she never thought she’d see, it was almost too much. She only turned away from him once she began to feel tears well up in her eyes. This encounter brought back too many painful memories. But pain, he had once told her, could be controlled. 

_Just disconnect it._

His dad disappeared back into the house, and was soon replaced by three boys around Kyle’s age, carrying even more boxes.

“Why've you got so much shit, Reese?” asked a short black kid with glasses.

“Because I’m trying to make things are hard as possible for you guys, that’s why.”

An tall Asian kid propped his box on the trucks roof so he could free his hands. “I’m really gonna miss you, man.” He walked over to Kyle and scooped him in for an awkward bear hug. Kyle tried not to laugh as he was lifted off his feet.

The kid with the glasses punched him playfully on the shoulder once the hugger finally put him down. “Hate to see you go, Reese. You know, it’s never too late to drop out and stay home.”

“Tempting, but I’m already balls deep in student loans. I might as well actually be a student for a while, otherwise they’d just be loans.”

“Things will never be the same without him,” cried a kid with a buzz cut, dramatically splaying himself out on the truck’s hood. “Poor kid, he was so young!”

“I’m not dying guys, I’ll see you in a few months, I’m coming home for Thanksgiving.”

“I can still hear his voice...”

Sarah didn’t bother stepping out of the jeep, but turned to face the small crowd of high schoolers, legs dangling out the missing driver’s side door. Dani followed her gaze across the street as she stowed the envelope in the glove compartment.

“That’s the friend you were talking about? He’s younger than I am.”

“I knew him, another him, from another time. Things have changed a lot since then.”

Kyle’s mom came bounding out the front door and embraced her son in an even more awkward hug than his friend’s.

“My little Kyle, heading out to college, paying bills. When’d you get so old? You’re not allowed to be an adult yet, you were still in preschool last week.”

“Mo-o-om,” Kyle complained with a smile. Only two of his friends laughed. “You didn’t act like this when Derek left for school.”

“Sure I did, every year, and I’ll do the same for you because I like embarrassing you in front of your friends. Now everyone come together. Marc, Andy, Sawyer, stand next to Kyle, I want to get a picture.”

“You already took a ton of pictures.”

“And I’m gonna take a ton more before you leave, now stand there and smile.”

They all huddled together against his truck, and she kept directing them like she was taking Christmas card photos at Sears. “Okay, now let’s have a funny one, everyone make a face. Great. Now let me get some with two of you at a time; Marc you’re first.

Marc, the kid with the buzz cut, took this as an opportunity to force an exit. “Hey, Mrs. Reese, why don’t you go get his dad, and I’ll take a photo of all three of you. A family portrait, wouldn’t that be nice, Kyle?”

“Oh, I can’t think of anything better.”

She smirked, taking their hint. “I’ll be right back,” she said as she disappeared back into the house, calling her husband’s name.

“Quick, help me pack everything now and I’ll be gone before she gets back,” Kyle joked once she was out of earshot.

Three of the four boys began stuffing thing into the passenger side, well after it was full to capacity, but the bespectacled Sawyer stood back by himself for a few moments. Sarah’s eyes were still locked on Kyle, but Sawyer’s eyes were locked on her.

“Hey,” he called to his friends. “What’s wrong with this picture?”

“What’s up?”

“There’s an old lady staring at you, Reese. She’s been staring for like five minutes.”

Kyle looked over at Sarah, and she immediately turned away.

“Good for her,” he said without a second thought. He continued with the task at hand, trying to force an uncooperative shoe box into the space beneath the passenger seat.

“That's creepy.”

“Not really. She’s just some lady, she’s not hurting anyone.”

“You ever heard of stranger danger? She’s giving you the bedroom eyes, you’re gonna wind up in her windowless van.”

“Dude, shut up, she can probably hear you. Besides, that’s a jeep, it’s got nothing _but_ windows, I’ll be fine.” Kyle turned back to Sarah who was trying to keep herself busy by reading the warranty sticker on the windshield. Dani nudged her to let her know Kyle was looking, and when she turned back to him, he smiled at her and waved.

Sawyer punched him on the shoulder again, less playfully this time. “Stranger. Danger. Windowless van. It’s your funeral, Reese.”

“Shut the fuck up, man. She’s probably a friend of my mom’s or something.”

With that, Sarah emerged from the jeep and walked over to the boys. Dani also stepped out so she could have a better look, but remained on the far side of the street. Sawyer tried to motion for his friends to head back towards the house, but none of them moved as Sarah stopped a few feet short of the curb.

“Kyle Reese?” She didn’t mean for it to come out as a question, but she couldn’t believe it was truly him.

“Never heard of him,” Sawyer said at the exact same moment Kyle responded “Yes.” A third punch, not playful at all.

“It’s really good to see you, Kyle.”

“Um, yeah, it’s good to see you too. How, uh, how have you been?”

“You can stop pretending like you know me. You don’t.”

“Okay, cause I was gonna say... So... can I help you? What’s up?” This woman was at least a decade older than his mom, and her face wasn’t familiar at all. He had thought that maybe she was an old babysitter of his, or he’d seen her at church or something, but he was now drawing a complete blank.

“I’m actually here to help you, Kyle. You see, there’s a storm coming. Something big, something bad, and I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to stop it.”

Kyle’s friends had backed into his yard, but he remained where he was on the curb. As she took a step closer to him, a gear in the back of his mind began turning, and he got the feeling that he _had_ seen her before, but still couldn’t place where.

She told him a date and a list of cities to avoid, suggesting he head out into the desert and stay there. Andy inched his way towards Kyle and gingerly grabbed his shoulder. “C’mon man, I think your mom’s calling us, we should head back inside.”

Sarah stared into his soul with such intensity that he was a deer in the headlights, unable to move. She reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out another manila envelope, thinner than Dani’s, and handed it to him. His friends shook their heads, silently imploring him not to take it, but he did anyway.

Dani, seeing that the hand off was complete, beat the hood of the jeep to call Sarah back over. “We’re burning daylight, we should head out. _¡Andale!_”

“Just a second,” Sarah cried over her shoulder. She turned back to Kyle, who was holding the envelope out at arm’s length like it could explode at any moment. “I don’t have time to explain everything right now, but it’s really important that you trust me on this, Kyle. Your future is at stake. I don’t have a lot of people left I still care about, but you’re one of them. Have courage in the dark times to come. I’ll try to help you with what you must soon face, but just know that the future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves. You must be stronger than you imagine you can be. You must survive.”

She turned and walked away, climbing back into her jeep without another word. The engine roared to life, and she and Dani sped away, returning to the mission at hand, leaving the four cowering boys in their wake.

“The fuck was that?” Sawyer finally managed. “I mean, _what the fuck was that about?_ What kind of shady ass drug dealer shit was that? Do not open that envelope, it could be a bomb or anthrax or something.”

“Dude, that was sketchy as hell,” Marc said, his voice wavering with adrenaline. “You need to tell your parents.”

“Who was she?” Andy asked, clutching his chest.

“I don’t know,” Kyle answered, tearing open the envelope before his friends had time to yell anything coherent. Inside was a long handwritten note which he’d accidentally torn in half. He had no time to read it before his parents came bounding back out of the house for their last family photo. The four friends broke apart and pretended like they had been loading the car this whole time; Kyle’s dad could tell they were hiding something, but didn’t want to ask what.

Kyle balled up the note in one hand and unceremoniously tossed it into the open window of his truck. He’d read it later and give his friends the full report, but he didn’t want his parents to know a thing, not yet at least. They took their photos, said their goodbyes, shared more hugs, and finally got all of his stuff wedged in such a way that nothing would fall out, and he hit the road just in time to get stuck in rush hour traffic.

He unwadded the note and barely made it through the first line before he froze.

“My name is Sarah Connor,” it read.

Sarah Connor.

**_THE_** Sarah Connor.

He’d heard her name a few times over the years. She was a domestic terrorist wanted for blowing up a computer company back in the 90s. They called her the Cyberdyne Bomber, and her name was up there with the likes of Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh. She’d been in the news recently because she was finally caught at the US-Mexico border trying to sneak back across. She’d apparently killed a ton of guards and stolen a police helicopter, then crashed it into a dam or something like that. Kyle hadn’t kept up with the news as intensely as his parents had.

He realized now that that’s where he knew her face from.

“Holy shit.”

He pulled off at the first exit he came to and parked at a gas station so he could read the whole note in peace. He’d heard that she was a crazy person; the news said she was schizophrenic, that she believed there were evil aliens robots trying to take over the world. Her note was legible, to say the least, but no less fantastical than the news made her out to be.

The end of the world was coming, fire and fury would rain down from the heavens, machines would rise up against man to exterminate all life on Earth. And here he was, stuck in the middle of it all. She claimed she knew him in a past life, one of his past lives apparently, or a future life, it didn’t make a lot of sense. Something to do with time travel, with a rogue AI called Skynet, but it’s also called Legion, but then only recently? She was trying to stop the end of the world, but didn’t know if she’d be successful, and just wanted to give him a heads up so he didn’t die like four billion others.

He’d lived through several end-of-the-world prophecies since he was a kid, but he’d never given them much thought. June 6, 2006, 666, Biblical Revelations, nothing happened. May 21, 2011, the rapture, nothing happened. December 21, 2012, the Mayan calendar, nothing happened. But Connor was convinced that the world was going to end later this month, for real this time, and wanted him specifically to know about it.

Why had a domestic terrorist singled him out like this? Was he in danger? Was his family? He considered calling the police, the FBI, the crime stoppers hotline, _anything_, but he wasn’t sure what he’d even say. At the bottom of the note was a cellphone number with too many digits, obviously international, and he typed it into his phone almost without thinking. He couldn’t stop himself from doing it anymore than he could force himself to call the police. He was on autopilot, fight or flight mode, and he had apparently chosen fight.

It rang once, twice, then connected with no greeting. He could hear the sound of wind whipping by on the other side, a car on the highway. With caution, he threw out a feeble “hello,” secretly hoping she wouldn’t be there and he could pretend none of this had happened.

“Talk to me, Reese.”

_Fuck._ “Is this really Sarah Connor?”

“Yes, Kyle. It is.”

“What’s going on?”

“Did you read my note or not?”

“None of that’s… it’s not… But that’s all BS… Isn’t it?” He sounded unconvinced, one way or the other.

So, Sarah had some convincing to do.

“Kyle, listen to me very carefully…”


End file.
